Foreign students come to Indiana, then go

Purdue University students walk through Memorial Mall in the midst of the spring semester’s Finals Week on April 30, 2013, in West Lafayette, Ind.
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WASHINGTON — Purdue University’s engineering programs are a magnet for foreign students. Indiana University sees students travel to Bloomington from other countries to attend business school.

But when those students graduate, few stay in the Lafayette and Bloomington areas, according to a study released Friday by the Brookings Institution.

The share of undergraduate and graduate foreign students in Lafayette from 2008 to 2012 — 55 foreigners for every 1,000 students — was higher than in all but seven of the 118 metropolitan areas studied by Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program.

With about 51 foreign students for every 1,000 students, Bloomington ranked 11th in the study.

But only 13 percent of the foreign students who graduated from IU and received permission for extended stays in the U.S. were working for a Bloomington employer. That was the ninth-lowest retention rate.

Only 11 percent were in the Lafayette area, the sixth-lowest rate.

Report author Neil Ruiz said the size of an area and job availability help determine how many foreign students stay in the community where they went to school.

In Las Vegas, two-thirds of the foreign students who stay find work in the area, which reflects the close connection between a world-renowned hospitality school at UNLV and the area’s large tourism industry.

A lot of students come to Purdue to study engineering, but the area may not have enough employment opportunities for them, Ruiz said.

“So, they’re probably being pulled to other parts of the Midwest or Silicon Valley,” he said.

An analysis published earlier this year by the Indiana Business Research Center at IU’s Kelley School of Business looked at which college graduates in Indiana were more likely to remain in Indiana. Those with engineering degrees were among the least likely to stay. The researchers speculated that was because of a “lack of employment opportunities at competitive compensation in the state.” In other words, they could get better, higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

Tanya Hall, an economic research analyst at the center who co-authored the report, said non-Indiana residents — whether they were from other countries or other states — were much less likely to stay in Indiana after graduation than Indiana residents.

“When you look at Indiana’s personal income compared to others states, Indiana’s is not the highest, unfortunately,” Hall said. “We get beat out by many other states in terms of compensation.”

And foreigners may have even less motivation to stay in the area.

“Many of the students who come from overseas are already in the cohort of those who tend to be more mobile,” Hall said.

Gov. Mike Pence has said the state is focused on growing its life sciences industry in part to create jobs, attract world-class talent and “stem the brain drain.”

Some have questioned whether foreign students, who pay higher tuition than Indiana students, are taking the slots of U.S. citizens, particularly at public universities.

Although the 2012-2013 school year attracted a record number of foreign students, foreigners have consistently made up about 3.4 percent of the nation’s higher education enrollment for decades, according to the Brookings report.

In assessing the local impact of foreign students, Brookings focused on the 118 metropolitan areas that had at least 1,500 foreign students from 2008 to 2012.

China sent the most students to the U.S. during that time, and Purdue was their top destination. The reasons for Purdue’s popularity include its lower tuition and highly ranked engineering program. The situation was similar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Lafayette ranked ninth among metro areas for the share of its foreign students — 64 percent — pursuing a degree in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM). Bloomington ranked 10th for the share of foreign students — 40 percent — pursuing a business degree.

In the 2013 fall semester, most of the graduate students at both Purdue’s College of Engineering and the College of Science were international.

Purdue has lobbied Congress to pass legislation to make it easier for foreigners who earn advanced STEM degrees from a U.S. institution to stay in the country after graduation.

Proponents say it doesn’t make sense to train the world’s best and brightest students and then send them away so they can compete against the U.S.

But critics say claims are overblown that indicate there’s a shortage of high-tech workers in the U.S., requiring foreign recruits.

Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.

Foreign students in the Lafayette area, 2008-2012

• Number of foreign students: 11,354.

• Rank of area for number of foreign students among 118 metro areas: 20th.

• Rank of area for number of foreign students per 1,000 total students: eighth.

• Share of foreign students pursuing a degree in a STEM field: 64 percent.

• Share of foreign student graduates working in area who also went to school there: 11 percent.

• Top countries where foreign students are from: China, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia.

Foreign students in the Bloomington area, 2008-2012

• Number of foreign students: 8,466.

• Rank of area for number of foreign students among 118 metro areas: 30th.

• Rank of area for number of foreign students per 1,000 total students: 11th.

• Share of foreign students pursuing a degree in a STEM field: 19 percent.

• Share of foreign student graduates working in area who also went to school there: 13 percent.

• Top countries where foreign students are from: China, South Korea, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong.